Spheric wrote:
> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session ends
> and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my
> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.
>
> The only thing I know to do is kill the power, boot up again and let JFS fix
> itself. Thank God for JFS.
>
> This is Mandriva 2007 Free. How does one diagnose and fix this?

one installs Slackware

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:17:15 -0400, Spheric wrote:

> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session ends
> and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my

Sounds like the xserver is crashing.

> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.

More info is needed on the video hardware, driver installed, and settings
in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, for seeing if anyone here has similar hardware, and
a way to keep it more stable. Do you have 3d desktop effects active?
>
> The only thing I know to do is kill the power, boot up again and let JFS fix
> itself. Thank God for JFS.

I'd also turn off hard drive write caching. Add "hdparm -W0 /dev/hda",
to /etc/rc.d/rc.local, for each hd, or sd hard drive.

> This is Mandriva 2007 Free. How does one diagnose and fix this?

Look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log, syslog, messages, kernel/errors, etc.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:17:15 -0700, Spheric wrote:
> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session ends
> and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my
> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.

Can we assume you have all updates installed? If not, use
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ to set your mirror and then you can install
them.

Spheric wrote:
> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session ends
> and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my
> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.
>
> The only thing I know to do is kill the power, boot up again and let JFS fix
> itself. Thank God for JFS.
>
> This is Mandriva 2007 Free. How does one diagnose and fix this?
>
> Thanks in advance as always!

My guess would be flaky RAM.
RAM failures are so rare these days that one forgets they can happen.

The BIOS RAM test on startup only checks for a response at certain
addresses to gage the total size, but does not actually test RAM
integrity.

Spheric wrote:

[snip]
> Now my
> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.

I've had similar problems on one computer. I blame the motherboard
(ASUS M2N-E) or the BIOS or the memory (cheap generic). I'll sort
it out one day.

> The only thing I know to do is kill the power, boot up again and let JFS
> fix itself. Thank God for JFS.

Don't forget the "magic" keys;
Alt-SysReq-r, Reset the keyboard to raw mode,
Alt-SysReq-s, Sync drives,
Alt-SysReq-e, End processes nicely,
Alt-SysReq-i, kIll processes that didn't die nicely,
Alt-SysReq-u, emergency Unmount,
Alt-SysReq-b, reBoot,
Alt-SysReq-o, Off.

"System Request" is also known a "Print Screen". Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't.

> This is Mandriva 2007 Free. How does one diagnose and fix this?
>
> Thanks in advance as always!

Use different hardware. If you have any better ideas I'd like to
hear them.


--
sig goes here...
Peter D.

Bit Twister wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:17:15 -0700, Spheric wrote:
>> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session
>> ends and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my
>> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
>> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
>> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.
>
> Can we assume you have all updates installed? If not, use
> http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ to set your mirror and then you can install
> them.

Sorry for delay in response. Yes, at the time of this writing all updates
were installed with urpmi. What ended up happening is the power supply
bloew up-like literally blew up. It took an HD out with it

David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:17:15 -0400, Spheric wrote:
>
>> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session
>> ends and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my
>
> Sounds like the xserver is crashing.
>
>> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
>> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
>> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.
>
> More info is needed on the video hardware, driver installed, and settings
> in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, for seeing if anyone here has similar hardware, and
> a way to keep it more stable. Do you have 3d desktop effects active?
>>
>> The only thing I know to do is kill the power, boot up again and let JFS
>> fix itself. Thank God for JFS.
>
> I'd also turn off hard drive write caching. Add "hdparm -W0 /dev/hda",
> to /etc/rc.d/rc.local, for each hd, or sd hard drive.
>
>> This is Mandriva 2007 Free. How does one diagnose and fix this?
>
> Look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log, syslog, messages, kernel/errors, etc.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins
>

Looks like it was hardware failure at this time. Power supply.

noway@nothanks.yo writes:

>Bit Twister wrote:

>> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:17:15 -0700, Spheric wrote:
>>> I've never seen this happen to a linux system. Occasionally, my session
>>> ends and I find myself back at KDE login for no reason I can tell. Now my
>>> desktop occasionally hangs up and doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse
>>> input. Sometimes the system hangs in screen saver and won't respond to
>>> input. These problems seem to be happening with more frequency.
>>
>> Can we assume you have all updates installed? If not, use
>> http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ to set your mirror and then you can install
>> them.

>Sorry for delay in response. Yes, at the time of this writing all updates
>were installed with urpmi. What ended up happening is the power supply
>bloew up-like literally blew up. It took an HD out with it

Well, had I seen this before your response, I would have said that you have
hardware problems. And sure enough you did.